Champion of the Crown Page 2

  Lady Ballard’s face was tense with concentration, but showed no signs of fear. She still thought she was going to win this fight. Willow flipped her knife into a different position and hurled it at the dowser. It wasn’t balanced for throwing, but all she cared about was distracting the woman.

  It glanced hilt-first off the dowser’s temple, making her cry out and stumble back a few paces. Instantly the green lines on Lady Ballard’s arms went dark and faded away. She thrust her hand out again, then screamed as a soldier’s curved sword went into her stomach. Two more soldiers went for the dowser, who tried and failed to scramble away before their swords intersected on her.

  Willow ran to retrieve her knife and looked around. No more green light. She could see Lord Wilde lying in a crumpled, bloody heap, and the dowser in her yellow satin dress crouched nearby, shaking. Why hadn’t they killed her?

  Eskandelic soldiers were restraining the enemy’s horses, and their riders lay on the ground, some of them dead and a few being guarded. Willow counted quickly; only eight horses. So two had escaped? Who were they running to—Terence? Well, he’d have to know of Felix’s return eventually, so this wasn’t a disaster.

  She ran to the second carriage and flung open the door, standing well to one side in case someone inside was armed and inclined to attack their lords’ killers.

  “Don’t hurt us!” At least half a dozen men and women, maybe more, were crammed into the carriage meant to hold only four. Most of them cringed away from Willow. She realized she was still holding her knife and sheathed it.

  “Come on out,” she said, and stepped away from the door. “Who are you?”

  “Kevin, my lady. His lordship’s valet.” Kevin was middle-aged, with dark hair and a short beard, and he looked terrified. “We’re the Lord and Lady’s body servants.”

  “Did you hear any of that?”

  Kevin swallowed and glanced toward where Lord Wilde lay. “Is it true? The Prince is alive?”

  “He’s the King. If you swear loyalty to him, we’ll let you live.” The idea of killing anyone in cold blood made Willow sick, but what else could she do? They couldn’t let anyone interested in harming Felix go free.

  “We swear!” A babble of voices emerged from the carriage, all of them pledging loyalty in some form or another.

  “Lady North,” Soltighan said from somewhere near her left elbow. “There are three guards who survived.”

  “How many did we lose?”

  “Two. A soldier and one of your insurgents. Fifteen more took injury, mostly slight, due to being thrown about like straw in the wind. We mourn our dead, but it is not so bad a loss for a first encounter with the enemy. We will know better how to face them in future. I have already some strategies in mind.”

  “Thanks, Soltighan. I’d better speak to those guards now.”

  The three men had been made to sit with their hands on their heads. Each looked at Willow with a neutral expression. “I’ll make this short,” Willow said. “You can swear fealty to your King, or you can die here and now. What will it be?”

  One man, whose short blond beard had blood in it, said, “Is he really the King?”

  “You heard Lord Wilde and Lady Ballard. They recognized him as Felix Valant.”

  “Then I’ll swear to him.”

  “What about you two?”

  The other men were silent. “Soltighan, make their deaths painless, if you can,” Willow said, keeping her voice from trembling. She’d actually thought all three would see sense. How anyone could be loyal to an Ascendant unto death…even Kerish had rebelled when it came to the choice between Terence and Felix. She turned away so she wouldn’t have to see the executions. Behind her, from the direction of the second carriage, someone threw up.

  “Willow,” Kerish said. Willow turned to embrace him. “Felix is safe. I’m sorry I put him in danger.”

  “No, you did the right thing. We just need a better plan for the next time this happens. The wands worked!”

  “They did. It’s always satisfying to see a Device you’ve invented work properly in the field, so to speak.” Kerish steered Willow back toward the wagon. “Emmeline refuses to speak to anyone.”

  “Who’s Emmeline?”

  “Lord Wilde’s dowser. She’s tremendously loyal to the Wilde family and…I don’t know if she’ll pledge loyalty to Felix.”

  Willow went cold. “Can’t you convince her?”

  “I’ve tried. She won’t listen.”

  “And you want me to talk to her. What good will that do?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t want to see any more deaths today.”

  Willow shook her head. Why would Kerish think she’d have success where he hadn’t?

  They’d taken the woman to Felix’s wagon, where Felix sat regarding her with curiosity. “Does she know who I am?” he asked Willow.

  “I don’t know. She seems pretty far gone. Emmeline? Sit up and show some respect for your King.”

  Emmeline shook her head vigorously. “Let my boy down, I have. Let down my family. Just let me die.”

  Willow hopped down from the wagon. “Can I have your canteen?” she asked Soltighan, who had his crossbow trained on the woman. Soltighan nodded, but didn’t offer to hand it to her, so Willow unfastened it from his belt and climbed back up, unstopping the cork. She grabbed Emmeline by the hair, pulled her head up, and threw the contents of the canteen in her face. Emmeline gasped and fought back, and Willow released her. “That’s better,” she said. “Now. Take a look at this little boy. Do you recognize him?”

  “Prince Felix,” Emmeline gasped, dashing water out of her face. “Dead Prince Felix.”

  “Very much alive King Felix,” Willow corrected her. “I know you were loyal to Lord Wilde’s family, and I respect loyalty. But Lord Wilde gave his loyalty to Terence Valant, who’s nothing but a pretender to the Crown, and I don’t respect that at all. You have a choice. You can swear loyalty to the true King of Tremontane, or you can reject him and…well, you know what happens to traitors. Your choice.”

  Emmeline curled into a ball again. “All gone, all dead, all gone,” she sang quietly to herself. “All dead, all dead, all nothing but dead.”

  Willow backed away and found Kerish standing near the end of the wagon. “Is she faking?”

  “I can’t tell. I never knew her well, but she always struck me as overly dramatic. Do we have to kill her?”

  “I don’t know. She seems harmless enough. Keep her a prisoner until we reach Rannis and can turn her over to Lady Heath? Imprisonment could be an acceptable punishment.” She ought to have the woman killed, but she’d had her fill of death for one day. And it seemed wrong to execute someone who wasn’t in enough control of her mental faculties to make a choice.

  “Have her confined in one of the wagons, and set one of your men to watch her,” she told Soltighan. She examined the sky. Just after one o’clock. “We’ll make camp now. We need to bury the dead. Kerish, let’s pitch our tent, and then I’ll write a letter to Lady Heath.” She took a deep breath. “I suddenly have a lot more to say.”

  Chapter Two

  Willow paced the confines of the little tent, restless and bored. They’d arrived outside Rannis around ten o’clock that morning, and Willow had ordered what Kerish called the negotiation tent pitched first, away from the rest of the camp. It was as elegant as all the other Eskandelic tents, snowy white and finely stitched, and contained three folding chairs, elaborately carved and decorated. Willow had never been more grateful for the Eskandelic tendency to put frills on everything. It made her feel as if she were meeting the Countess of Huddersfield on more than an equal footing.

  “Willow?” Felix said. “Are you worried?” He was seated on one of the chairs with his legs dangling.

  “What? Of course not.”

  “Then why won’t you sit down?”

  His voice was tense, higher-pitched than usual, and his small hands gripped the armrests so hard his knuckles were white. Willow sank i
nto the seat next to him and pried up one of his hands. “I always have a lot of energy before I go midnighting. This is just how it comes out.”

  “But you’re not midnighting now.”

  “No, but it’s sort of the same thing, convincing someone you’re right.” She didn’t say and the consequences of failing could be disastrous, not only because it would worry Felix but because she didn’t want the stolid bodyguards, standing at attention in a row behind them, to think she was weak. It didn’t matter what they thought, so long as they kept Felix safe, but she had a feeling their respect of her influenced what they thought of their small charge.

  Kerish poked his head inside the tent. “There’s a small army headed this way.”

  Willow shot to her feet and pushed past him. “Sound the alarm.”

  A troop of armed and armored soldiers were, in fact, headed their way along and beside the road that wound through fields of ripe corn. The tall stalks bent in their passage, irritating Willow. Trust a noble not to care what happened to the fields of common workers.

  “I think they’re stopping,” Kerish said. “Well away from us.”

  “She’s disregarding my instructions. We need to be ready to fight.” But she waved off Soltighan’s second in command, who looked poised to execute her order. It worried her that the officers were willing to take orders from someone not in their chain of command, unless Janida had instructed them to…no time to worry about it now.

  A few people on horseback approached ahead of the troops. One of them carried a staff with the Huddersfield flag attached to it, hanging limp in the airless noon. The rest of the troops did seem to have stopped. Willow cursed, then looked quickly back at Felix. The pinched, frightened look was back. She went into the tent and knelt by his side.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “We outnumber them, and I won’t let them anywhere near you if they’re armed. Don’t be afraid. You need to be a King today. Can you do that?”

  Felix nodded. “Hilarion says a King should rule his fear and not let it rule him. So I won’t.”

  “That’s very wise. And I’m going to sit next to you, and we’ll be brave together.”

  Felix laughed. “I didn’t think you were afraid of anything.”

  “I don’t let it rule me, either.”

  She stood and murmured in Kerish’s ear, “Have them searched thoroughly before you let them in here.” Kerish nodded and took a few steps away from the tent door, and Willow went to sit by Felix, gripping his hand briefly before resting hers on the arm of her chair. She flexed her left arm, testing the fit of her forearm blade. Was the Countess trained to fight? Most noblewomen weren’t, but Willow wasn’t going to make assumptions that could get someone killed.

  The tent walls muffled the noises from outside, making Willow feel like she was underwater in a hot, dry sea. She smiled at Felix, who didn’t smile back. This was stupid. Why did she even care about Tremontane, again? Because this is the right thing to do. Because you care about the people living here. The urge to take Felix and Kerish and run southward was growing again. She ruthlessly stomped it into paste. She’d chosen her path, and she would see it through to the end. No fear. Not ever.

  The sound of horses’ harnesses came to them, distantly, and Kerish’s voice saying, “Stop there.” Then silence. Willow scratched her armpit. The tent was too warm, and she was starting to sweat. It had nothing to do with nerves, but suppose the Countess thought otherwise? Nothing she could do about it now.

  Footsteps, approaching, growing louder. Kerish pushed open the tent flap and said, “Lady Philippa Heath, Countess of Huddersfield.”

  Willow stood, putting a restraining hand on Felix’s arm to keep him from doing the same. “Lady Heath,” she said, inclining her head and praying this was how the nobles did it. Everything she’d learned about nobility, she’d learned from watching Rufus Black and his fellow dukes of crime. That was probably all wrong, but it was another thing she couldn’t do anything about now.

  Lady Heath didn’t react as if she was mortally offended. She bowed her head to Willow, moving forward to allow four other people to enter behind her. Then she turned her attention on Felix. “So it is true,” she said in a deep, almost masculine voice. “You have brought Felix Valant back to Tremontane.”

  “It’s true,” Willow said, inwardly sagging with relief. Suppose Lady Heath had never seen Felix before? Convincing someone that Felix was who he said he was would be incredibly difficult, given that she herself was unknown to the rulers of Tremontane and was no one they’d be inclined to trust. One step closer to gaining Lady Heath’s support.

  “May I sit, your Majesty?” Lady Heath said. She didn’t offer to introduce her escort, which Willow found odd. They were important enough to come to this meeting, but not important enough to be made known to the King? She felt her grip on the situation slipping. There were so many things she didn’t know about being noble, and at some point she’d do something truly stupid and Lady Heath would know she was an impostor.

  “Please,” Felix said, and Lady Heath took her seat across from him. Her escort lined up behind her, and Willow spared them a quick glance: three men and one woman, all dressed finely but not in court clothing, just as the Countess was. Two of the men were elderly, the third man was middle-aged like the Countess, and the woman was maybe a few years younger than Willow. None of them, including the Countess, were armed, not even with hidden blades that would make silvery streaks across her perception. It was all the observation she had time for, because the Countess was saying, “So your Majesty intends to reclaim the Crown from Terence Valant? Is that the reason for the large body of Eskandelic soldiers you travel with?”

  “They’re my bodyguards. They’re to protect me from Uncle Terence until we have Tremontanan soldiers.”

  “And you want me to pledge my men to your cause.”

  “We want the Counts and Barons of Tremontane to support their rightful ruler,” Willow said. “You’ve already pledged your fealty to Felix in your letter.”

  “I recognized him as King, contingent on him being who he said he was,” Lady Heath said. “That doesn’t mean I’ll support him.”

  “Your King can demand your support. Either you believe that’s who Felix is, or you don’t.”

  “How long have you been in Eskandel, Lady North?”

  “Most of four months. I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

  “Things have changed. Terence Valant controls the government with his Ascendants. They are as good as an army, and none of us—none of the provincial rulers—maintain enough of an armed force to go against them. Alric Quinn is preparing to rise up against him, but even he and his allies are bound to fail without a way to neutralize the Ascendants. Valant represents stability, even if it’s the stability of fear. Disturbing the new status quo could be disastrous.”

  “Terence Valant rules Tremontane illegally. Do you really want to live under his thumb?”

  “What I want is peace. We have peace, for now.”

  Willow stood. “You have the peace of slavery, is what you have,” she said. “Terence is going to go on making demands of you and the people of Tremontane. He’s going to allow his fellow Ascendants to rule unjustly over this country and not rein in their excesses. He has to be stopped.”

  Lady Heath looked up at Willow, but made no move to rise. “The young King would do better never to be discovered. Terence will kill him to cement his claim to the Crown. If you go into battle against him, the Ascendants will destroy you.”

  “They won’t. We have a way to defeat them.”

  Lady Heath raised a pencil-thin eyebrow. “Do you.”

  “We do. And I can prove it.”

  “There are no Ascendants here.”

  “We just need a source. Do you have a Dev—a dowser in your household?”

  Lady Heath indicated one of the elderly men, who was tall and stoop-shouldered with bright blue eyes. “Lord Carrington.”

  “Lord Carrington, if you�
�d be so good as to locate the nearest source?”

  The bright blue eyes regarded her briefly as Lord Carrington considered her request. “Follow me,” he finally said. Willow prodded Felix to follow Lady Heath’s party, surrounded by his bodyguards.

  Carrington headed back along the road toward the waiting troop of Huddersfield soldiers. “Stop right there,” Willow said. “Kerish?”

  Kerish had a distant look in his eye that said he was listening to something. “There’s a source in that direction,” he said. “It’s not as far as those soldiers.”

  “All right. Continue, my lord.”

  Carrington’s expression went sour, and he glanced at Lady Heath briefly. The Countess gave him a nod. Willow could hardly blame him for not wanting to take orders from a stranger.

  Carrington veered off the path before they reached the cornfield, heading left. They walked in silence, the only noises their feet rustling the tall grasses of the fallow field and the chirring of insects leaping from blade to blade. Already the day was cooler than it had been on their journey north. Autumn was Willow’s favorite time of year, when produce was plentiful and the streets stopped being so hot, but she’d never seen it from outside the city before. The fresh smell of ripe corn filled the air, relaxing her. They’d convince the Countess. They had to.

  The spot Carrington led them to looked no different than anywhere else, but source, which arose at the intersection of two of the invisible lines of power, was also invisible. Willow looked to Kerish for guidance. He nodded. “Start drawing on the source, as if you’re about to dowse,” Kerish said.

  Carrington again glanced at Lady Heath for instruction. The Countess gave Willow a skeptical look. “This had better not be a waste of my time.”

  “It’s not,” Willow said, drawing her ash wand from its sheath along her right thigh. With her left hand, she dipped into her pocket for a fizzing silver disc and fitted it over the tip of her wand, moving slowly so she wouldn’t look like a threat. Not that any of Lady Heath’s party knew anything of Devices to be suspicious.